Following the announcement of Splatoon 3, fans have zeroed in on the enhanced character customization menu. It doesn't look like gender options will play any part in character creation, unlike past Splatoon installments, though Nintendo has yet to confirm the extent of these details.
At yesterday's Nintendo Direct, the Japanese giant announced the highly-anticipated next installment in the shooter series. The announcement trailer for Splatoon 3 was unique; it showed what appears to be what players will first see when booting up the game: the character customization screen, as well as a strange graphic of a squid kid riding a train in a post-apocalyptic world. Then, the Splatoon 3 trailer finally showed off some enhanced gameplay from previous installments, as well as more customizable characters.
As players have pointed out, it appears there are no gender options for Splatoon 3's inklings and octolings. The first menu in character customization asks the player to choose between an inkling or an octoling, then asks the player to choose a skin tone, which also looks to have a broad range, similar to Splatoon 2. Then, the player chooses eye color, where some wackier combinations appear, then "hair time," and the styles aren't separated by male or female categories. Finally, players will choose legwear, which also doesn't have gender-based restrictions.
In Splatoon 2 which released back in 2017, players were first required to pick one of the two binary genders, boy or girl, in the character creation menu before advancing, and hairstyles were separated depending on the gender chosen. Skirts were also available legwear, but only for female inklings and octolings.
But Nintendo looks to be following Animal Crossing: New Horizons' trend with Splatoon 3. Released nearly a year ago, AC: NH also doesn't require the player to choose a gender. Rather, its character creation window starts with skin tone, then goes on to hairstyle and color, then eyes, and so on and so forth. At no point are players restricted from wearing any clothing based on gender. In the same way that players applauded New Horizons for ridding the useless option, Splatoon fans are happy to see another Nintendo franchise following suit.
Now, the big question is how Splatoon 3 will handle voice tones. This is something Cyberpunk 2077 came under fire for after claiming to be all-inclusive on gender: players still needed to choose a "male" or "female" voice, which also results in romance restrictions later on. Inklings and octolings each had distinctive voices in past games. But similar to how Splatoon 3 presents hairstyles unabated by genders, it would be interesting to see a simple list of voice options denoted by numbers rather than "male" or "female," or even pitch, that players can freely select.
Splatoon 3 is set to release in 2022 exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.